In making the embroidery it would appear as if the pattern was first drawn on paper, then cut out, and finally worked over, the designs being for the most part in somewhat high relief.
It is worthy of remark that, almost invariably, whenever this embroidery is put up for sale or is exhibited, it is marked as the work of the “Nuns of Little Gidding.” Now, it may be said that all those who at the present day take any interest in the life, methods, or work of Nicholas Ferrar and his nieces, do so with feelings of admiration, and are, at least, not to be numbered amongst their detractors. Yet it is curious how the one name which helped more than anything else to work their ruin is even now, as a rule, attached to them. Within a few years of Nicholas Ferrar’s death, some of his enemies had a pamphlet printed and distributed “not by hundreds, but by thousands, and given into the hands of the parliament men as they went daily to the House of Commons.” The title was, “The Arminian Nunnery; a description of the newly erected Monastical Place, or the
Arminian Nunnery at Little Gidding.” The books were also given to the Puritan soldiers when near Gidding to excite them to offer violence to the family. But why should the title “Nuns of Little Gidding” be still the name most often given to the Miss Colletts? Few persons can realize that it is the name invented by their enemies, earnestly repudiated by themselves, and entirely devoid of truth.
This may be proved in several ways. The house at Little Gidding contained two married families, the boys and girls all growing up together. The girls were purposely trained in such domestic matters as would fit them for good wives, and five of them did eventually marry. The two eldest alone, having reached the ages of thirty and thirty-two, resolved to remain unmarried, but in no way took vows. Nicholas Ferrar himself was once taxed with having started a “nunnery,” and replied that the name of “nuns” was odious, and declared himself against such vows of single life with great earnestness.
Again, a visitor to Little Gidding, describing the place and the family, says, “I saluted the mother and daughter not like nuns, but as we salute other women.”
Probably when the phrase “Nuns of Little Gidding” is used at the present time, it is used in no reproachful sense; but the name is misleading, and should be avoided, if for no other reason, because it was invented by the enemies of Mr. Ferrar’s family and objected to by themselves.
The family, as a matter of fact, were by no means recluses; they went about amongst their neighbours, and were “very well reported of by all who knew them.” They purposely selected a quiet part of the country to live in, that they might not be interrupted in their manifold employments; but they appear to have been always ready to receive visitors, and to treat them with hospitality.
Ferrar’s rules for his own life were certainly somewhat austere, and as time went on he increased its rigour, more especially after his mother’s death; but he never enforced on others what he did himself, and every hour of the day appears to have been spent usefully and happily.
It may be interesting to give here the opinions of some of his more notable friends. Mention has already been made of the important persons he lived amongst in his public life, and besides them at this time there was Dr. Laud the Archbishop,
who was so delighted to ordain “such a man as he never had before nor believed he ever should again.” There was Dr. Williams the Bishop of the Diocese, who often went to Gidding and “much magnified all that Nicholas and Mrs. Ferrar had done;” and not to mention others, there was George Herbert, “his very dear brother,” who, “seeing he could not draw Gidding any nearer to him, he would draw nearer to his brother Ferrar,” and was endeavouring to exchange his living merely to carry out this wish. These two good men were indeed very similar in their religious views; they “loved and trusted one another most entirely, and drove a large stock of Christian intelligence together,” and when George Herbert died, he sent his manuscripts to Ferrar to publish or to withhold, as he thought right. Chief amongst them were the poems now such favourites in many a house. These, when Ferrar had many and many a time read over, he kissed and embraced them again and again, saying, “they were most worthy to be in the hands and hearts of all true Christians that feared God and loved the Church of England.”